{"id":7446,"date":"2014-08-13T20:31:00","date_gmt":"2014-08-14T03:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/?p=7446"},"modified":"2015-09-29T22:42:38","modified_gmt":"2015-09-30T05:42:38","slug":"cool-looking-lizards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/2014\/08\/13\/cool-looking-lizards\/","title":{"rendered":"Cool Looking Lizards"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve seen so many amazing things on this trip that we might be getting a bit jaded &#8211; today, after driving up to some rocks with female lions sleeping on top, Bruce took a look at the inactive cats and lack of good photography light and said &#8220;well, there&#8217;s a cool looking lizard in front of them&#8221;.  Life is pretty good when you can see one of the world&#8217;s fiercest predators lounging in front of you and be more interested in the tiny reptile at its feet.<\/p>\n<p>Today we got lots of cats &#8211; lions and cheetahs &#8211; and more huge lines of wildebeests.  The park we&#8217;re in doesn&#8217;t allow off-road driving, so when someone finds something good there is a bit of a paparazzi feel as vehicles come rushing in from all corners to get a look.  We had a cheetah that had just killed a small gazelle to ourselves for about a minute before the cavalry came charging over the hill in the morning, but in the afternoon we went to a different corner of the park and managed to get a cheetah completely to ourselves.  The next park on the itinerary supposedly allows off-road driving, so it may again be possible to escape the &#8220;crowds&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Aside from the animals, today&#8217;s excitement came from driving after last night&#8217;s rains &#8211; everything was muddy, and the tires didn&#8217;t have a ton of tread, so we were slipping and sliding all over.  Just before lunch we veered slightly off road to pass someone and there was a crash &#8211; our vehicle had broken through an aardvark hole and was stuck.  Since being stuck in the bush isn&#8217;t exciting enough, our breakdown was <i>right<\/i> in front of a young male lion.  While AAA might be hesitant to service a vehicle with a giant carnivore watching, the guides here had no such qualms and we were extricated fairly quickly.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/photos\/images\/2014-08-B\/5068-masai-mara-lion-and-cub.jpg\" alt=\"Lions in Masai Mara Game Reserve\" width=\"700\" height=\"467\" class=\"img-main\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"caption\">Hopefully people aren&#8217;t sick of seeing lion photos in this journal &#8211; they are fun to photograph, particularly when the cubs are playful and the light is good.<\/div>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/photos\/images\/2014-08-B\/5084-masai-mara-lion-cub.jpg\" alt=\"Lion cub in Masai Mara Game Reserve\" width=\"700\" height=\"467\" class=\"img-main\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"caption\">&#8220;Simba&#8221; is Swahili for &#8220;lion&#8221;.  I asked a guide in Tanzania what &#8220;Mufasa&#8221; meant, and his answer was &#8220;it means Disney made up a word&#8221;.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve seen so many amazing things on this trip that we might be getting a bit jaded &#8211; today, after driving up to some rocks with female lions sleeping on top, Bruce took a look at the inactive cats and lack of good photography light and said &#8220;well, there&#8217;s a cool looking lizard in front &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/2014\/08\/13\/cool-looking-lizards\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Cool Looking Lizards&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23,20,30],"class_list":["post-7446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","tag-2014-world-tour","tag-kenya","tag-photography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7446"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8177,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7446\/revisions\/8177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountaininterval.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}